The 'Gravity Carnation' exhibition, which brings together the works of six artists, is at Pilot Gallery: Inspired by Cansever...

The exhibition includes works by Ece Ağırtmış, Eymen Aktel, Burak Ata, Melih Çebi, Hazal Özgür and Ecem Yüksel. Drawing on childhood memories and details of daily life, the works in the exhibition make one think about issues such as identity, memory, social unconscious, the impact of technology and the evolution of artistic expression.

In the exhibition, the works of six artists who share a common theme, not on a specific theme but on various linguistic and artistic approaches, are passed from hand to hand, like “then the carnation passes from hand to hand” in Cansever’s poem, and time, labor, the ebb and flow of daily life, and the effects of the digital age and consumer society on people are passed from hand to hand.

The starting point of this exhibition was the years-long exchanges between artist Ece Ağırtmış, whose work is in the exhibition, and Pilot Gallery director Azra Tüzünoğlu. We asked Tüzünoğlu where the name of the exhibition came from and how the works of different artists came to be gathered under this name.

FOCUS ON A GENERATION

How did the works in the exhibition come together?

The coming together of the works in the exhibition proceeded in a slightly different way than our approach to date. The works in the exhibition were selected from the artists and works that Ece Ağırtmış shared with me in the messages she sent me over time. There is a wealth of sharing between Ece and me that spreads from Instagram to WhatsApp and then to different mediums. Sometimes the corner of a work, its pedestal, sometimes the way it is hung, the paints she uses catch our attention and countless messages are sent to her and to me and to her throughout the day. I realized that these messages that have been going on for over three years are actually an attitude that tries to understand Ece’s world of meaning as well as what a generation looks at, how and why. Ece was describing this generation of artists through her friends (some we know, some we don’t). From this correspondence that included nearly 200 artists from Turkey and abroad, Ece and I decided to focus on six artists. Since reducing the scale was necessary in terms of the relationship with the space and because we thought it was necessary to sample different works by the same artist in order to create an opportunity to observe the sharing and common reference points between these artists...

'OCEANS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS'

What do Edip Cansever's "Gravity Carnation" have in common with the exhibition?

I had thought of the title “Ece’s Friends” for the exhibition, but Ece asked if there could be a more inclusive title… Gravitational Carnation is a poem by Edip Cansever that I really like. I think it is one of the strangest poems in Turkish, and I cannot say that I fully understand what it means. This metaphor of a carnation that passes from hand to hand seemed to me to be a metaphor that could convey the visible and invisible sharing between artists. Carnation is a kind of love, value, inspiration, perhaps a sparkle found in the tunnels of social memory… In the exhibition, you will notice pink-painted houses, amphoras, oceans of the unconscious and its silent demons, cats, dogs, pigeons and various animals roaming around on the artists’ canvases. I think whatever that thing is that is noticed is the carnation.